IIRC, this led to a parting of the ways, as Puzikas was a SI instructor, for some years. Was this GS shooting? No, but solid people seem to rotate out of his stable on a regular basis(i.e., craziness encourages their departure). Bad stuff happens to everyone, at some point, but this go-for-broke mindset has been a Suarez staple, and tends to overshadow calculated thought and planning. FWIW.

This may have changed, over the years, but rushing out a "Kill" manual does not exactly improve my perspective of his judgement. There are better instructors, with far deeper thought driving their work.

Rob72 wrote:... rushing out a "Kill" manual does not exactly improve my perspective of his judgement. There are better instructors, with far deeper thought driving their work.

Suarez's active shooter book was released many years ago. The book review was from 2014.

Do you have a book or DVD about active shooter interdiction that you would recommend?

I was active on Warrior Talk when this came out ~2010. It was published primarily as GS' response to the Fort Hood shooting (11/2009).

"Active Shooter response," is problematic, for many reasons, not the least of which being that if LE shows up, and you're tooling around with a firearm, you probably won't be walking away. First and foremost is situational assessment: how/when/where should I act? Being a civvie is vastly different than having a badge or uniform.

With that caveat, any good level 3-4 "defensive/combative" pistol class can be applied. Those levels being shoot/no-shoot, reactive targets, non-traditional shooting positions, low-light and force-on-force tactics.

As I said, Gabe Suarez has lots of Ooh-RAH! personna built into his stuff. Is it all bad? No. But you can spend more time learning, and less filtering from others. If you have the disposable $$, by all means, check him out. If you allocate limited funds annually, why pick someone who generates such polarizing reactions, unless you shoot GM class, have been on a 2 way range, and want to see if this guy really pushes the envelope?

Paladin wrote:...This is a review of the Suarez Active Shooter Interdiction class. They teach the "rear naked" choke. A choke that was used in 2015 to stop the Paris train active shooter.

While I haven't had the chance to take Mr. Suarez's Active Shooter Interdiction class, I have done active shooter training and some Israeli counter-terrorism training... and the list of topics Mr. Suarez covers look very good. It's well worth training on precision head shots, distance shots, Force-on-Force, how to use an AK47, knives, chokes, and pistol & rifle disarms.

The FBI study on active shooters did not show a major problem with responding armed civilians being shot by responding police. Paul Howe teaches to re-conceal your pistol after any shooting to avoid being accidentally targeted by police. Sounds like good advice to me.

....many incidents ended before police arrived. Of the 160 incidents, at least 107 (66.9%) ended before police arrived and could engage the shooter, either because a citizen intervened, the shooter fled, or the shooter committed suicide or was killed by someone at the scene.

The numbers show that police are too slow 2 out of 3 times and police often take casualties when they do get there in time. Armed citizens are quicker to respond and have a much better success rate. If armed citizens take action, the event will probably be resolved by the time on-duty police get to the scene. Mr. Suarez has additional advice in his book.

Until other instructors publish their own books on active shooter interdiction and open up training to the license-to-carry community, Mr. Suarez will be the leader in the area because he doesn't have any direct competition on the subject.

I wish there was more of this training available. Krav Maga, Haganah, and jiu-jitsu can fill in some of the gaps.

A school shooter is just a target in a unique environment. There are plenty of books discussing the mindset and means of addressing a threat. Start with Cooper and Jordan. Plenty of good reading out there. Suarez just has attached hhe word school to his essay.

One issue is that we don't have many incidents like South Africa, or the Westlake mall attacks (Nairobi, 2013), so there is little information on the interaction between LE and armed citizens in an active-fire environment. Since the '50s, there have been multiple incidents in the US where armed citizens had effective contribution in a shooting. Most of those have been rural, with the most memorable urban incident being Charles Whitman, at UT. Short version- Suarez advocates a full-on combat readyrig to be used to engage an active shooter. How would that have been received by LAPD during the LA bank heist? We don't know. Period.

I'll bow out, as I don't wish to pointlessly disagree.

My objective observations are: Suarez was active LE in California in the early 80s. Yes, it was a time of narco pricing and territory wars, and yes, there were some free-fire zones in multiple metropolitan areas in the US. He is not, however, BTDT in the context of current asymmetrical conflict. He has theories and tactics he's picked up elsewhere, and put his spin on them.

Several excellent Mil/LE trainers have been mentioned who are more practically experienced. Notably, they are far more ecumenical and supportive of each other, though they have expressed differences in some tactics.

Suarez bills himself as the originator and be-all, end-all of all things tactical. Such hubris, in the absence of profound and extensive live-fire experience should be a bit concerning.

I would submit that you can gain more practical, and superior, gun handling advice on Brian Enos' forum. IME, superior threat assessment and interdiction theory, and practice, is available from any of the other names mentioned.

Spend $15 bucks on his book. Get a couple of level 3-4 handgun & rifle classes from other folks. See what meshes, and what may not.

There are good things about competitive shooting and other things that competitive shooting simply does not address.

...I shot IPSC for a couple of years and it helped with my draw, presentation, multiple shots and
multiple targets. It did not help me with use of cover, tactical movement, tactical thinking,
discrimination, etc. In the end, I moved to tactical training only. My simple shooting systems
needed to encompass all these aspect and not just one narrow bandwidth of shooting a pistol. I
cannot promote speed over safety or proper discrimination or proper use of cover....use
IDPA and IPSC as a training vehicle to make you a more technically proficient
shooter. But know the difference between tactical and technical.

Surviving a Mass Killer Rampage looks like it has a lot of facts from survivors of active shooter events. It is not so much an instruction guide, but is written from the armed citizen perspective and well reviewed.

The average active killer will kill or wound between four and five people a minute. Police reaction time varies from a couple of minutes to half an hour. The best way to stop these murders is to have someone close to the scene with a gun and the training to use it.

Responding to an Active Shooter is the most difficult mission to perform of all the missions skills assigned to either patrol or tactical officers...Normally students have problems on the first run and are in shock at what they encounter.

I believe the active shooter event is worth specifically training for. Active shooter training starts with mindset and tactics and then gets into skills for both the permissive and non-permissive environments.